News roundup: A beheading at a noodle shop

Business & Technology

Top China news for February 20, 2017. Get this daily digest delivered to your inbox by signing up atย supchina.com/subscribe.


Dear reader,

Todayโ€™s newsletter is brief: Weโ€™re celebrating Presidentsโ€™ Day here in the U.S. Two stories caught our eyes today:

Customer beheads noodle shop owner

A 22-year-old man who ate three bowls of noodles at a restaurant in Wuhan, Hubei Province, got into a dispute with the owner after accusing him of overcharging by three yuan ($0.44). The customer then severed the proprietorโ€™s head and deposited it in a trash can outside the restaurant. The man was arrested shortly thereafter. According to iFeng.comย (in Chinese), police asked internet users not to post grisly images of the crime that were spread online over the weekend. The South China Morning Postย saysย the incident has highlighted a โ€œcrisis in psychiatric careโ€ in China โ€” the man had previously spent six months in a psychiatric hospital.

State-owned energy company reports massive loss

Sinopec Oilfield Service Corp, a Shanghai-listed unit of state-owned energy giant Sinopec, reported a loss in 2016 of 16 billion yuan ($2.3 billion), which the South China Morning Postย reportsย is โ€œvery close to the record high 16.3 billion yuan loss registered by Chalco, the listed unit of Chinaโ€™s second-largest aluminum producer Chinalco, in 2014.โ€ The huge loss is yet another sign that Xi Jinpingโ€™s much-touted promiseย to give โ€œa decisive role to the market economyโ€ is not being implemented.

โ€”Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor in Chief


This issue of the The China Projectย newsletter was produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Lucas Niewenhuis. More China stories worth your time are curated below, with the most important ones at the top of each section.


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